Quotes from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“This man has conquered the world! What have you done?"
The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the
initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend
makes them timorous.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“Fame Imperishable and glory that will never die -- that is what we march for!”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“Warfare is theatre, I have said, and the essence of theatre is aritifce. What we show, we will not do. What we don't show, we will do.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“When deliberating, think in campaigns and not battles; in wars and not
campaigns; in ultimate conquest and not wars.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“Every virtue that reaches the exaggeration, is becoming a defect”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“From that day, I vowed never to squander a moment's care over the good opinion of others. May they rot in hell. You have heard of my abstemiousness in matters of food and sex. Here is why: I punished myself. If I caught my thoughts straying to another's opinion of me, I sent myself to bed without supper. As for women, I likewise permitted myself none. I missed no few meals, and no small pleasure, before I brought this vice under control.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“He's a sturdy fellow, bald as a hen's egg, and like all engineers, practical as a pensioner.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

“The Band advances to the cadence of the flute, and has no call for retreat. Its code is Stand and Die.”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

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Popular quotes

“Our simple daily decisions can become our best friend or our worst enemy. They can draw us towards our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away. These are the days of our lives. We are offered choices every day; sickness or health, poverty or wealth, happiness or misery, knowledge or ignorance, to jump or to wait, to grow or to die, faith or doubt, for better or worse. Everything in your life exists because you made a series of decisions. Each decision, positive or negative, starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. It is the little things that we put off doing that cumulatively make an enormous difference–in the end results.”
― Mary Maina, quote from The Proverbs 31 Lady: Unveiling Her Secrets Before Saying I Do

“The War broke out, and our city and country became a part of Hitler's Imperium. For five and a half years we lived in a dimension completely different from that which any literature or experience could have led us to know. What we beheld surpassed the most daring and the most macabre imagination. Descriptions of horrors known to us of old now made us smile at their naivete. German rule in Eu­rope was ruthless, but nowhere so ruthless as in the East, for the East was populated by races which, according to the doctrines of National Socialism, were either to be utterly eradicated or else used for heavy physical labor. The events we were forced to partici­pate in resulted from the effort to put these doctrines into practice.
Still we lived; and since we were writers, we tried to write. True, from time to time one of us dropped out, shipped off to a concentration camp or shot. There was no help for this. We were like people marooned on a dissolving floe of ice; we dared not think of the moment when it would melt away.”
― Czesław Miłosz, quote from The Captive Mind

“This is a part of post-college life that nobody ever warns you about. Your social life is no longer dropped into your lap by virtue of shared classes and extracurricular activities. Relationships, whether with friends, family, or romantic partners—from here on out, they’re going to take a lot more work. No more built-in friends at the sorority, or hollering down the stairs when I need my mom. It’s certainly not going to be as easy to meet guys now that I’m done with school. It’s not like I can just chat up the cute guy in econ class anymore.”
― Lauren Layne, quote from Broken

“bazen," dedi, "kalbim duruyor sanki.bazen kalbimin attığını hiç ama hiç hissetmiyorum.”
― Tess Gerritsen, quote from Presumed Guilty

“Natural body. I suppose I can live with that. That's the best euphemism for fat, lazy slob I've ever heard and no matter how I scan it, it still doesn't sound insulting.”
― Edward Southgate, quote from Great Pleasures

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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